The Stars Above Us
by BotanyCameos
Summary: Kirk thought he'd changed fate when he saved Khan from execution and his crew from experimentation. But maybe the wheel has come full circle, and it is the young captain who will pay in an indirect manner for Khan's crimes against the universe. (Passed after the end of Star Trek Into Darkness, with some details changed such as Khan not being frozen.)
1. Prologue

_Kirk thought he'd changed fate when he saved Khan from execution and his crew from experimentation. _  
><em>But maybe the wheel has come full circle, and it is the young captain who will pay in an indirect manner for Khan's crimes against the universe.<em>  
>(Passed after the end of Star Trek Into Darkness, with some details changed such as Khan not being frozen.)<p>

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><p><em>It is the stars, <em>  
><em>The stars above us, govern our conditions.<em>  
>(King Lear, 4.3.37)<p>

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><p>Stardate 2259.321<br>14:17pm

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><p>He was dying.<p>

He was sure of it. He must be.

That was what it had felt like the previous time. The burning, the pain and the fear.

The cold seeping into his bones even as he felt like his body was burning out.

Only, this time he was alone at the very end. No Spock beyond the glass, talking to him and keeping the fear at bay.

In the reactor he had managed to stay strong for Spock. He was so scared, but the sight of his friend looking so pained had given him the willpower to stay in control and talk to Spock. This time, he was all alone.

Well, not at first. At first, when the explosion racked the ship mid-inspection, the engineering section of the USS Vina had been full of cadets. He'd been going through the motions with the inspection, thorough in his work but bored to tears, only one thought in his mind, to finish it so that he could return to his own ship, to his beloved Enterprise.

And then came the accident, and the radiation. The pain of dying all over again, worse than before since now he knew exactly what horror to expect.

Even then, his instincts had been stronger than the fear, and he had found himself shoving the cadets towards the exit as fast as he could, dragging and carrying the ones who had fallen, rushing to get everyone out before the security doors closed.

Again and again he had rushed back in to help injured cadets, carrying those who could not walk. Kids, they were kids! Or so his sense of responsibility told him, but in truth they weren't that much younger than he himself. Past crises had given him a composure and strength he had not known he possessed.

He had gone above and beyond, but now it had been too much. The delta rays were searing his flesh, and he could barely hear the alarms blaring throughout the ship. Everyone was gone, it seemed, or at least he could no longer see or hear them.

With the absence of people in need of saving, Kirk's heroics bled out, the spike of adrenaline now gone. And with the newfound aloneness, the fear returned, terror gripping him in the very depths of his soul.

"Spock, help me..."

Chapped lips breathed out the words instinctively, but he was too far gone to realize anymore that the Vulcan wasn't there, or to notice the emergency responders in hazmat gear storming the radiation-flooded corridor.

The world was dark and made of pain.

Before he lost consciousness completely, Jim found that his last thought was a puzzling one. A memory of Khan, with those expressive green-blue eyes filled with gratitude, looking up at him while the augment knelt at his feet like an offering, telling Jim some crazy thing about being ready to die for his crew.

Jim wanted to refuse him, to shake his head in denial, but the pain was such he couldn't tell if his body was moving or not.

_I never wanted that. I never wanted any of this. But there's no going back and changing it now._

Jim's heart was still beating when they put him on the gurney, but it stopped shortly after, giving way to hurried attempts to revive him as the response team prepared to beam him down to the medical facility.

.

.

.

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><p><em>Reviews are lovely and most welcome! They re-energize writers. :D3<em>


	2. Ch01: Enemy at the end of the tunnel

_O fortune, fortune! all men call thee fickle:_  
><em>If thou art fickle, what dost thou with him.<em>  
><em>That is renown'd for faith?<em>  
>(Romeo and Juliet, 3.5.59-63)<p>

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><p><strong>Stardate 2259.321<strong>  
>(November 17th 2259)<br>Mid-afternoon

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><p>The Enterprise bridge crew was informed of the accident in spacedock shortly after the first responders had beamed down.<p>

Spock and Bones were the first ones to make it to the hospital.

By then Kirk was already in intensive care and there was not much that could be done besides waiting and hoping he would survive.  
>Unlike the previous time, where radiation poisoning had been the primary cause for his body shutting down, this time the radiation burns had been deeper and contributed to causing even more extensive damage. It was probably for the best that the others had not seen the state of the young captain when he was brought in, but the image would haunt Spock's mind for a long time, and even Bones was visibly shaken despite quickly slipping into his role as a doctor.<p>

Uhura and then Scotty arrived shortly after the other two. They came running up the corridor, hurried and breathless, filled with worry and questions.

Spock had filled them in while they all waited for more news from Bones, who -as the captain's assigned physician- had joined the medical team working on Kirk.

"It was just supposed to be a routine inspection. It was weird enough that they sent him of all people, to inspect a cadet vessel despite how young he is, but now this...?! How could this happen? He was only away from the Enterprise for a day and now... now..." Uhura's delicate fingers flitted over her cheeks and down her arms in nervous gestures as she spoke.

Spock relayed what he'd been told by Starfleet. "The vessel was an old class J starship. Almost a relic by today's technological standards. It was apparently poorly maintained." The Vulcan had a lost look on his face, his usually stoic voice sounding hollow, an indication of how hard he found it to remain in control of his emotions in the current situation.

Scotty wasn't fully convinced by Starfleet's official version of the facts. "All the same, I cannae believe any engineer in his right mind coulda missed this kind of damage before the inspection. According to the report, one of the baffle plates ruptured. How could that have happened without anyone noticing the deterioration before?!"

"I am puzzled by it as well, Mr. Scott," Spock agreed, "and I intend to launch a full-scale investigation into the matter as soon as I am at liberty to do so." The way the Vulcan's eyes strayed every so often in the direction of the operating room made clear what he meant - he would not consider himself at liberty to go anywhere whatsoever until he was sure of his friend's survival. With Jim injured, however, Spock would be acting captain of the Enterprise until his recovery, and as such be in a stronger position to speak at the inquest and to better demand answers. Captains, even an acting one, had duties and prerogatives that far outweighed those of a commander.

Encouraged, Scotty asked, "You do that, Mister Spock. And I'll be on the investigation team when you get through to them. I hafta get me hands on their evidence and take a good close look at it meself." He ran a hand through his hair, his mind already going through the various possibilities.

Uhura was more focused on the immediate. "The damage done by the delta rays... Could it possibly be healed the way... the same way it was done last time?"

The words she left unspoken were present in all their minds. _The time he died to save us all._  
>The time Spock lost himself to emotion and nearly killed a man for revenge. The time they used Khan's blood to defy nature and save a man from certain death.<p>

"Dr. McCoy has already contacted Dr. Boyce, who was in charge of the captain's treatment last time. Starfleet has also been informed of that possibility and a request was placed with the probation office. I am not certain of the exact location where... Khan is serving his probation, but I believe they will call him in with a request to donate at least a blood sample to replicate the serum used last time. There is no way to know whether he will accept, but one can expect Starfleet will pressure him to." The way Spock voiced the augment's name made his distaste for the man plainly obvious.

It had been almost eight months since the Vengeance crashed into San Francisco, but it was still vivid in all their minds. And the more recent incident during the Enterprise repairs had only solidified the impression.

The Vulcan controlled himself as much as possible, before continuing in a nevertheless despondent tone, "However, Dr. McCoy is of the opinion that given the strain the treatment put on the captain's body last time, a second attempt is unlikely to succeed as well, especially considering Jim's current condition and how extensive the burns... the..."

Spock turned away from the two, discreetly pressing the back of his hand to his mouth and forcing himself to focus on anything but the memory of Jim laying on the gurney, horribly disfigured by the radiation burns, dying in front of him for the second time, his skin and flesh practically melting off of him right in front of Spock's eyes as he watched through the containment window in the intensive care unit.  
>He may not be a doctor, but he had far too much scientific knowledge to ignore the fact that a radiation burn so extensive was unlikely to be anything but lethal. No matter the skill of the medical team, there was only so much a human body could take. The chances of the captain surviving this afternoon were extremely slim. Spock bit the inside of his cheek, tasting copper.<p>

_Once more, seeing his last moments through a glass pane, unable to do anything to save him._

No amount of Vulcan meditation could ever wipe away this kind of horror.

Uhura was quickly at his side, one arm on his, her other hand rubbing soothing circles on his back. Always warm and loving, knowing exactly what he needed, she was his rock, now as it was after the first time Jim died.

They were all shaken. Scotty had tears in his eyes too, and at times even Uhura's gentle reassurances sounded like she might be trying to convince herself as much as Spock. They'd mourned Jim once already. Losing him a second time was too painful.

Just then, the turbolift doors at the end of the corridor opened, and with rapid steps in strode the man who was both their loathed nemesis and potentially their only hope.

_Khan Noonien Singh._

_._

_._

_._

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><p>Reviews are so welcome! They re-energize writers! :D<p> 


	3. Ch02: Re-birth and Fall

And now we see if you're all keeping track of the stardates at the beginning of each chapter... ;D

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><p><em>My stars shine darkly over me:<em>  
><em>The malignancy of my fate might perhaps<em>  
><em>distemper yours.<em>

(Twelfth Night, 2.1.3)

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><p><strong>Stardate 2259.72<strong>  
>(March 13th 2259)<br>Early afternoon

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><p><em>.<em>

_._

_._

_"Your father was captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved eight-hundred lives. **I dare you to do better.**"_

The space around him had been pitch black and nothing but a confusing void until that voice in particular, as if it had beckoned him to return, dragged him kicking and screaming, and threw him back out of the depths, out of that non-state that felt like drowning, like floating aimlessly through the darkness.

His eyes shot open suddenly, and he drew in a quick succession of rushed breaths, almost like a rattle.

It was the second time these words had dragged him out of being lost in the dark. Though this time it was more literal than the first.

He stared wide-eyed at the room he found himself in. Breathing was somewhat difficult, as if there was fluid in his lungs. He did so erratically, fighting for each gulp of air that came burning into him. At his side, a machine made a brief buzzing noise, possibly registering the moment when he nearly choked and had to squeeze his eyes shut to focus on inhaling and exhaling properly.

Birds chirped outside, an odd detail that seemed to clash with the gravity of the moment, at least to him, as he slipped from the unconscious nothingness of near-death to the unexpectedly bright world surrounding him.

In his stupor, he was unsure of where he was or even if this was the world of the living, up until his head lolled to the side and a familiar face came into his field of vision.

"Oh, don't be so melodramatic. You were _barely_ dead."

He would recognize that grumpy voice anywhere in the world. It brought with it a surge of warmth and a feeling of safety he hadn't realized he'd been missing so badly when he first woke up.

He stared at Bones while the doctor explained, "It was the transfusion that really took its toll. You were out cold for two weeks."

Jim was out of it enough that he didn't even object to the hand-scanner Bones was waving by his face, something he normally hated.

"Transfusion?"

"Your cells were heavily irradiated. We had no choice."

"Khan."

As soon as the name left his lips, his gaze shot to Bones' face for confirmation, but it wasn't really needed. It wasn't a question. He knew.

The instant he'd woken up, he'd inherently known. It became completely clear once Bones mentioned a transfusion, but he'd always known. He could practically _feel_ Khan, the strength, passion, and contradictions that made up the man, coursing through his veins.

And with that sobering certainty, the veil of dizziness that accompanied his sudden awakening lifted. He was more alert, or at least trying to be, his mind attempting to push away the convalescent exhaustion and race through the information, to process all its implications and retrieve all the elements he was missing.  
>To Jim's dismay, he noticed that at the moment it was extremely hard for him to even think properly. He felt like utter shit, his body and mind so worn out that breathing and staying conscious seemed to be the extent of his abilities at the moment, and even then, just barely. Speaking required significant effort.<p>

Before he could ask anything, Bones was talking again, filling him in with morsels of information that Kirk absorbed in succession.

"Once we caught him, I synthesized a serum from his...'super blood'...  
>Tell me, are you feeling... homicidal? Power mad? Despotic?"<p>

The debacle on the _Vengeance_ notwithstanding, these were hardly fair ways to describe Khan; but they were a perfect example of Bones' wry humor, and the joke did its work, bringing a smile to Jim's lips. He quipped back, "No more than usual."

It wasn't enough however, to stop the captain from worrying about the idea of Bones somehow having attempted to catch Khan, or who else might have gotten injured in the attempt.

"How d'you catch him?"

"I didn't. "

Bones stepped aside to reveal Spock standing behind him. The Vulcan approached the bed gingerly, as if afraid that anything more than soft steps might somehow disturb the captain's frail condition. Spock's face was as controlled as ever, but Jim was just so happy to see him unharmed, that no amount of Vulcan impassivity could derail his good mood. A fond smile lit up the captain's face and he breathed out, "You saved my life."

From the sidelines, while fiddling with one of the machines monitoring Kirk, Bones could be heard grumpily correcting him with a "Uhura and I had something to do with it too." Jim spared him a glance but his attention was quickly drawn back to Spock, whose face held an unusually soft expression as he said, "You saved my life, captain. And the lives of your c-"

"Spock, just..."

There was so much he wanted to tell the Vulcan. Mostly, how grateful he was and how glad he was to see him alive and well. Although a small, non-conforming part of him wanted to ask Spock how he could manage to sound so formal after the heartbreaking closeness they had shared during his farewell in the reactor. It felt as if they were going backwards, to where they were when he'd lost the _Enterprise_, on the moment when he tried to tell Spock how much he'd miss him, and received nothing but a blank stare in return. _It felt like a lifetime ago._

But Kirk knew better by now. He knew that Spock was only that way outwardly, and that their friendship was real and as present in his heart as in Kirk's own.

It was only a matter of coaxing the Vulcan to learn to express that feeling... Or to simply accept that no matter how closed-off Spock may at times behave, the bond between them would still be there.

Any attempts to voice these thoughts would have to wait until Kirk was able to do so without potentially passing out from lack of breath in the middle of it. For the time being, he contented himself with telling Spock a very heartfelt thank you.

And that was when the Vulcan surprised him yet again.

"You are welcome, Jim."

Despite the composure he kept, there was such obvious warmth and deep care in the way Spock replied, delivering each word with such evident joy over the captain's survival, that Vulcan traditionalists would no doubt frown deeply at such a blatant display of emotion, discreet as it may have been. And he'd used Kirk's first name, an added touch of warmth. His compromise, his way to try and be a little more open for his friend.

If he weren't so tired, Jim could have leapt in surprise. Instead, he settled for grinning at Spock happily.

"Captain, now that we have ascertained you are doing well, I will comm the others to inform them."

Bones jumped right in, "Not in here, you won't! If you're going to use a communicator, you ought to get down to the cafeteria to do it. And don't tell everyone to come swarm Jim! He can't have any more visitors just yet. It's bad enough that you're here all the time, any more people would be too risky."

Bones huffed and fussed, shooing the Vulcan out and telling Jim to rest for now, promising that he'd be back later with a battery of antimicrobial hypos. Kirk shuddered, not looking forward to that.

An instant later, the automatic door swished open again, and a hand popped in to knock lightly on the wall beside it.  
>"Hey, Jim, how are you doing? I was nearby and heard you had woken up."<p>

Pleasantly surprised, Jim beamed at the new arrival. "José! How did you make it past Bones?!"

It had been a good while since Jim last saw his Academy friend but each time they met, they always seemed to pick up right where they had left off.

Already a captain when Kirk was a cadet, José Mendez was some years older and had regularly served as an instructor at the Academy, but he and Jim had similar natures and got along quite well, despite the age gap and difference in rank. The man had gone on to become one of Starfleet's youngest commodores, and had a promising career ahead of him in Starfleet Command. He and Jim kept tabs on each other and liked to go out for drinks whenever they were on shore leave in the same area.

"Oh, I have my methods. I deviously snuck past him when he went to get some medication."

Jim cracked up laughing as José entered the room making exaggerated stealthy motions to amuse him.

After the roller coaster of emotion he'd gone through by dying and coming back, and the immense relief combined with gratitude he'd felt on seeing his two closest friends safe and sound again, Jim was feeling drained, and welcomed the lightness of this interaction, tired as he might be. He also didn't want to think of what dreams he might have if he did give in to the tiredness and slept, so the distraction was doubly welcome.

"So José, what brings you here?"

"What, I can't have come to visit just to check on you?" Mendez sat on the edge of the bed, close enough to talk with Jim in a quieter voice, but hopefully not so close that it would be dangerous for him, considering the captain's weakened immune system after the radiation.

"With this timing...?"

"Well, okay, touché. I would have waited, but there's the matter of a certain superman you had a run-in with recently..."

Jim froze, not expecting that.

"What happened to Khan?"

Kirk had intended to ask at some point - José always knew everything that was going on, one way or another -, but he was surprised the man brought it up himself, especially so soon. All the more so since this didn't seem in any way to be an official visit from Starfleet Command. Jim tried to push away the fogginess of exhaustion to focus as much as possible. He had an odd sliver of worry in his heart, an inexplicable worry he probably shouldn't feel for a man who had fired on his ship.

"We'll know soon. It's why I'm here, actually. I was going to wait until normal visits were allowed, but when I heard they were going to wake you up from the induced coma today, I figured it would be a wasted opportunity if I didn't come ask you if you wanted me to transmit anything from you to the court. His trial is this afternoon. Well, 'trial'... It's a closed court-martial hearing the top brass are holding, on a need-to-know basis only. So whatever comes out of it, there will be nothing public. They'll likely use one of these exceptions to the death penalty law they tend to come up with, and finish off the damn bastard so they can bury this whole shitstorm at last. By the way, you didn't hear any of this from me. It's my neck on the line..."

José's talkative nature was normally a source of funny anecdotes and pleasant moments chatting, but this time his words left Jim feeling like he'd been punched in the stomach. He stared at his friend, agape and a bit breathless, not quite sure what to think or say, until he could gather himself enough to gasp out a somewhat shocked "What... Why?"

Of all the things in that unexpected batch of news, somehow this was the one thing he clung to. _Why a closed court martial...?! It makes no sense whatsoever. Khan was never truly a member of Starfleet, and so judging him as one is... Unless..._

_**'Finish off the damn bastard so they can bury this whole shitstorm at last...'**_

_The trial is a sham. They don't want a civil hearing or any public one because they are going to do anything they can just to get rid of the inconvenient evidence of their leader's wrongdoings._  
>It was almost a wonder they didn't take a page from Marcus' book and try to get rid of him or the <em>Enterprise<em> too. A jolt of anger pierced through the bone-deep weariness and immense disappointment he was feeling.

Mistaking the intent of Jim's words, it was José's turn to look surprised. He'd assumed Kirk meant to ask why he was revealing the classified information, rather than why the trial was secret, and replied accordingly, "Well...you're a trusted friend and you went through hell because of this guy. I figured you deserved to know. And besides, you're practically one of us. Pike wanted you in too. He was just waiting until you were ready, a bit older and more experienced."

Just when Jim thought he couldn't be any more shocked, this new bomb dropped.

Finding it hard to breathe, he gasped for air and stared at his friend as if he wasn't quite sure of who the man was, all of a sudden. It occurred to Jim that he might be hyperventilating, and he wondered how far away Bones might be, should his lungs suddenly stop working.

Apparently, he must have been looking bad enough that Mendez started sharing similar thoughts. The commodore's eyes had strayed to the machine making sure Jim's vitals were okay. Jim ascribed this to the near-choking noise he'd made a moment ago.

"I'm fine. Tell me what the hell is going on. Why are they doing this?"

He couldn't ask about the rest yet. He was afraid to.

_One of us._

_Pike wanted you in too._

_No no no no no_

Marcus did say he'd been the one to get Pike to join Starfleet. And when Pike had recruited Jim, he hadn't talked of exploring or science and research. He'd described Starfleet as a peace-keeping armada. Pike had always been a military man, and Jim had always prided himself in being one too. Peacekeepers. Like Pike, and also his father before.

_Until Marcus twisted everything around, at least._

If anything, it was surprising that the thought of Pike being in Section 31 too had never occurred to him before.

He felt like throwing up.

He had to focus on something else. Anything else.

_Khan is going to die. The man who knows all of Marcus' dirty secrets is going to die. They will bury him, and likely his crew too. All so that no one finds out about it all._

There. At least, that was safer territory. Safe enough, at least. The urgency of the present situation would help him stay away from dangerous thoughts. As far as possible from thinking of Pike, or of what role he had in any of it all, or how deep in he was. Focus on anything but that.

José may not be able to know what he was thinking, but he could see Jim's growing agitation, and the questions about the trial only made it even more evident.

"Jim, that guy's a rabid animal. You're lucky you're alive. " He pulled out a PADD and typed in some access codes, then paused for a second, locking eyes with Jim and saying, in a quieter voice, "I'm not supposed to be showing you this, but well, take a look."

It was security camera footage of Khan in a cell.

Presumably not long after the _Vengeance_ crash and the serum-synthesizing, but long enough after the capture that the augment was able to stand.

On a small PADD like this, the quality wasn't as good as the security camera footage of Khan in the streets of London which Jim had viewed in the past. But the feeling was similar enough that it still brought Jim an odd chill at the déjà-vu, watching the augment through this outside eye, like the night of the conference room attack.

Except Khan looked nothing like he did that night: no well-organized escape, no elegant wardrobe, none of the poise he'd displayed before even in dramatic moments.

The man in the video looked unkempt and insane. Five guards were attempting to restrain him, and failing. There was blood on his clothes and on his face, and his shoulder sat at an odd angle that was painful to see, but he seemed to be ignoring that. His hair fell over much of his face, not in the way it did on Kronos, where it had been messy but only dirty from the ash and sweat. Now it seemed to cling to his skin, matted with blood. Said skin, which he recalled had healed from bruises in a manner of hours after Kronos, was currently marred by dark bruises and nasty scrapes. His face was a mess. His jaw was maybe the worst part, swollen badly and not quite at a proper angle.

Looking closer, Jim was noticing more and more things that would be terribly unsettling to see on any prisoner, but particularly surprising on someone like Khan. Idly, he wondered how those injuries could possibly have been allowed to get this bad instead of receiving medical treatment, but then again, if the augment had been this recalcitrant all along, it was no wonder.

And yet, even so wounded, Khan kept on fighting. It was amazing that he could even move when there was so much visible damage, not to mention whatever injuries Jim couldn't see under the clothes.

The augment practically roared as he kicked one of the guards square in the chest, sending him flying and slamming against the nearby wall. The other four tried to drag him to the ground, without much success.

José pointed at the guard on the ground in the video and explained, "The only reason that guy he kicked survived was because of how weakened the bastard is, thanks to the major beating he received from your first officer. And this video is from three days after capture. He's already able to fight like this even though he was barely conscious for the first two days from the concussion and intracranial bleeding. I saw a guard strike his broken arm with a stun baton to try and drop him, and he just screamed but didn't even go down."

Jim seemed shell-shocked, feeling increasingly lost while continuing to mentally catalogue the injuries he could spot in the video. Everything was becoming like a droning in the background for him, too horrible to process. Something in what José just said had made it through to him, however.

"Spock...did _this?"_

"Well... yeah. You died. And this guy almost escaped. I don't blame Commander Spock, even if he did lose it a bit... In fact, I don't think anyone would lose much sleep over this even if your communications officer hadn't managed to stop him from killing Khan. I saw the footage of that fight too, and let me tell you, I don't ever want to piss off a Vulcan. It was chilling, how many bones he broke on that guy. I'm pretty sure that if he'd hit the bastard one more time, he'd have killed him. And don't get me wrong, Jim. You know I don't condone prisoner mistreatment. But this fucker had it coming. He killed Chris."

A spike of pain that had nothing to do with his physical state shot through Jim anew.

_Pike._

_Pike dying on the ground, with a smoking hole in his chest._

No matter what his current uncertainties about Section 31 might be, Pike was still the closest thing to a father he'd ever had. He was certain Pike couldn't possibly be in as deep as Marcus had been, and he couldn't possibly shake off the crippling pain and anger that the vivid memory of his death brought up.

Guilt at failing to save his mentor festered inside the young captain, together with a burning need to make Khan suffer.

But then the image of the augment in the brig on the _Enterprise_, telling him of what Marcus had done superimposed itself, combined with that of how injured he was in the video.

The fury wasn't gone. Nothing excused Pike's death. Jim wanted Khan to pay, and to pay hard. But the video was still playing on the PADD, and the guards had somehow subdued the augment, possibly by stunning him or using something else to drop him. Khan was now on the ground, still belligerent but wheezing and trying to get back up to keep fighting.  
>Jim could see what José had told him, how Khan's continued attempts to resist and fight off his guards were reminiscent of a wild animal, continuing to struggle and fight no matter what injury it sustained. But it was hard to focus on hating him when seeing him so diminished.<p>

And it only got worse when he realized Khan still thought his crew was dead.

It was hard to pick up everything that was being said on the video, but one of the guards told Khan something that sounded along the lines of "...at this rate they'll definitely put them all down, even the frozen ones."

He could see Khan's face fall, undergoing a rapid transformation from complete shock to disbelief, hope, denial, and finally absolute terror as the gravity of the situation became a reality.

José looked embarrassed at this, all the more so when they heard the higher-ranking officer of the group confirm the threat and clarify that the cryotubes would be destroyed soon if Khan kept "giving them reason to believe he was nothing but a savage", and that his behavior might be the only thing making a difference in when his people would be exterminated. He did not even offer the augment a shred of hope that good behavior might save them, he had the callousness of saying _"sooner or later"._

The young commodore fidgeted, clearly disagreeing with how things had been handled, but he didn't say anything against the men in the video. Nor did he comment on the absolutely appalled look Jim was sporting now.

A lesser man would rejoice in seeing his enemy humiliated and broken.

Kirk was no lesser man.

José sighed, reaching for the PADD with a sudden need to do damage control, "I think we've seen eno-"

Jim was having none of it.

"I _need_ to see this."

Jim clung to the device, not letting the other man retrieve it or turn it off.

José deflated. If he wanted to, he could easily take the PADD by force, with Jim's current condition it would require no effort at all, but he wouldn't do this to him. If anything, he sort of expected this would happen, knowing his friend's nature.

"I really think you don't, especially in your state. But sure, watch it. I already broke the rules anyway, you might as well see it all."

Jim's eyes were riveted to the screen, while José looked noticeably embarrassed that his friend was witnessing such poor behavior on the part of some of his colleagues.

And then, it grew exponentially worse when Jim saw what he never thought he'd witness.

Khan, throwing aside his dignity and openly begging for the lives of his crew.

Jim knew Khan had already done it before, with Marcus. But knowing it and seeing it were two very different things.

_Did I look the same way when I begged Marcus on the bridge? When he sneered at me and told me he never had any intention to spare my crew? Was I as desperate and frightened as Khan seems now? Knowing I had led them to death and there was nothing I could do to save them?_

The augment may have been his enemy, but Jim's stomach churned at the sight of Khan in such a position.

.

.

.

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><p>Mendez is from canon, he's a TOS character.<br>The backstory about them becoming friends at the academy in particular is my own creation, but we know that they were indeed good friends in canon, and Mendez was a commodore during season 1.  
>He was willing to risk his life on a seemingly desperate situation just because Jim was going too. It later turned out to be an illusion and Mendez had not truly been on board that shuttle, but at the time Jim believed he was and did not find the behavior strange, which indicates it was consistent with Mendez' real personality. So presumably, they were close enough friends!<br>Also, he was knowledgeable in subspace gossip and had access to secret Starfleet command documents, which he let Jim read, (and even the ability to suspend a General Order!)  
>So... from that I extrapolated that he was ideal for the situation in this chapter.<br>Btw, in TOS Mendez was more formal when addressing Pike, but given that their circumstances were a bit changed this time around, I'm having him refer to Pike as "Chris" sometimes, like Kirk had done in TOS.

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><p>Reviews are so welcome! They re-energize writers! :D<p> 


	4. Ch03: The Iron Way

_The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!_  
>Moby Dick<br>(On the inevitability of self-destructive vengeance.)

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><p><strong>Stardate 2259.321<strong>  
>(November 17th 2259)<br>Late afternoon

* * *

><p>.<p>

.

.

Rain pattered steadily against the windows of the tiny apartment Starfleet had assigned Khan on the edge of the East Housing area of the Presidio in San Francisco.

The augment idly gazed at the stormy clouds, his fingertips pressed over the area they had drawn blood from, still feeling the puncture on his forearm as if it was still there, even though it was long sealed.

The sky was dark in the distance, the rain falling more heavily over the remains of Alcatraz that he'd clipped with the Vengeance.

He'd given such a large quantity of blood that if he had been a normal man, he would have significantly endangered himself. But as he was, it merely made him feel slightly faint; still well able to defend himself if needed, only a little slower and faster to tire down. A few large meals and enough sleep in the upcoming nights would probably fix most of it.

In the distance, the crash site was still visible, even several months later. Or to be exact, it was the absence of skyscrapers in that area that made it most conspicuous, even after the debris removal and rebuilding had long been underway.

Almost a year ago, the horrible devastation he'd wreaked upon the city had brutally shocked him and left him shaken when he stared down at it from the torn-open carcass of the ship- and yet, not even that had managed to derail him from his path of vengeance and self-destruction. Only a furious Vulcan had managed to do that, and even then only by force.

Seeing his people die in front of him had momentarily torn his sanity from him, making him unable to focus on anything but the red haze demanding that he avenge them, and that he remain alive only long enough to make Starfleet pay for their deaths.

But now that he knew his family was alive and safe -albeit still parted from him- the guilt over the destruction he'd caused overrode the anger at the past wrongs suffered.

It was one of the reasons he complied with Starfleet's petty demands and their puny chains. The foolish things imposed by the probation office. The work he was made to do for Starfleet. The hold they thought they had over him. And to add insult to injury, the pathetic piece of hardware secured around his ankle even now, its blinking light an ongoing offense to everything he was or had been.

He could have hacked the system and destroyed the device long ago. He could have broken free from these chains and so many others, and disappeared where Starfleet could never touch him again.

But they had so many other ways of keeping tabs on his movements. Facial recognition software all around the city that was ready to set off alarms if he wandered anywhere without permission, obligations to report to Starfleet at regular times lest he be immediately classified a fugitive, and so on.

Most importantly, there would be consequences if he overstepped any boundaries. Heavy consequences that he had no intention to set in motion.

So long as the price was himself, he had always been willing to pay it to ensure the wellbeing of his family.

He did the bare minimum Starfleet asked of him, but he made sure not to overtly break any of the rules they had established.

Not for now, at least.

If he had wanted to escape alone, he could easily have done it. But leaving alone was never something Khan would have chosen.

Close to a year ago, when his attempt to free his people from Marcus had failed, the only reason he had fled to Kronos alone was because he had thought his people were dead, and that remaining alive to make the admiral pay was the only thing he could do.

Now, things were radically different. With the possibility that his compliance with Starfleet could actually result in his people being given a new chance one day, everything was different. There was finally a real reason to try.

This too, was something he had to thank Kirk for. The idea that they might be taken out of cryostasis or be given a colony one day might yet end up turning out to be a fool's hope, but it was still hope, and more than he'd ever been given before.

So he would keep complying, bowing his head to people unworthy of commanding him, selling himself to Starfleet a little each day, in hopes to purchase a future for his people.

Up until Kirk's intervention, his loved ones had been at the mercy of Starfleet changing their mind or lying about their intentions at any time. They were promised certain death at best, or horrible experimentation at worst. He would have drowned Starfleet in blood before he let such a thing happen. He would have died a million times over to prevent that.

But this was all out of the equation now. They were still in stasis, but they were safe, finally. He no longer had to spend his days bending to anyone's whims to win them an additional day, an additional hour of life, as it had been under Marcus. And it was all thanks to Kirk.

He may not trust a word from Starfleet - regarding with nothing but distrust and scorn their empty promises and grand claims of peace and good intentions - but he trusted Kirk.

He sighed softly. That was precisely why things were so muddled now.

The apartment was chilly in the November weather. Khan's breath fogged up the window slightly as he stared from afar at the scar he'd left on the city. He'd never intended to do it. He wanted to hit Starfleet Headquarters, never the civilian population. He'd been too blind with grief and rage to see what would happen, and the ship had been too broken down to reach its target. As a result, the North Waterfront, the North Beach and part of Telegraph Hill were largely destroyed. The ship having hit Alcatraz first and having fallen in the water before careening into the buildings had been less destructive than if it had reached farther and hit full-on a heavily populated area, but that was little consolation. The destruction was still there, and so were all the lost lives. There was no going back. What was done was done, he could only live with that added layer of guilt.

Night was falling over San Francisco, darkness slowly descending upon the city.

The rain was leaving rivulets down the window panes, as if to emulate a visual reflection of his black mood.

At 00:15:07:45 he had received a call from a Doctor Boyce, former CMO of the Enterprise, informing him that Kirk had been badly injured, and asking if he would help.

According to the doctor, the hospital had contacted Starfleet's Probation Office, and they had informed Boyce that Khan had refused to even respond to the request. The old doctor had used his own connections to get a direct line to the section the augment was assigned to in order to insist he help. It was then that Khan first heard of the accident Kirk had been in.

_If_ it really was an accident. It reeked of a Section 31 cover-up to get rid of an inconvenient hero-captain with a bad habit of disobeying unethical orders and asking too many questions.

Kirk was the golden boy of the Federation, savior of Earth once, potentially twice...but he was also the reason why Marcus' pet projects had been set back so far; officers with potential affiliation to Section 31 were under close scrutiny, and abundant cash flows had turned to trickles no longer able to easily fund secret projects with little or no accountability.

In other words, the young captain had painted a target over himself in more ways than one, the icing on the cake being his intervention on the matter of the augments.

Whether the accident was of a criminal nature or not, Starfleet's refusal to inform him of the matter left no doubt that at the very least, there were elements among the organization who wanted to minimize the chances of Kirk coming out alive.

Even if he hadn't already owed the man so much, Khan would have felt compelled to rush to his aid just to throw a wrench in their common enemies' plans.

As it was, with the debts he owed the captain, not helping Kirk was something he'd never even remotely have considered.

He rushed to the hospital as quickly as the infuriating probationary restrictions allowed, donated all the blood he was asked for and much more, and gave Boyce his personal communicator frequency so the man could contact him again in case they needed more blood. The frequency was almost certainly monitored by Starfleet - Khan didn't believe for one moment their claims that it was a private channel - but that wouldn't matter.

He absentmindedly wiped a hand over the window pane, erasing the fog on the inside. There was no heating in his unit, not that it mattered to him.

The rain outside continued to rage, thick drops hitting the glass with a dull sound. It was nothing compared to the monsoons of India of his childhood, or even compared to the weather of London, where he had spent a large part of his year under Marcus, but the uncommon weather for San Francisco was vaguely disheartening. He used to find storms invigorating, but it was different now. Or at least here and now.

Not for the first time that afternoon, Khan pondered whether he should have simply stayed at the hospital until Kirk's condition was stable. He wasn't in the habit of questioning decisions he'd settled upon. Apparently that was yet another unexpected effect Kirk had on him.  
>He'd left because there was nothing else he could do and he did not want to potentially cause any additional trouble for the captain. But it was oddly nerve-wracking to depend on the elderly doctor's promise to inform him of the outcome of the medical intervention, even for one such as him, whose patience had been tested for so long on the battlefield.<p>

He whispered between his teeth, "Don't you dare die like this, Captain. I won't allow it."

.

.

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><p>A big thank you to NurseDarry for beta'ing! :D<br>(Any butchering of the English language that might remain is my own addition, and not her fault in any way.)

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><p>Reviews are so welcome! They re-energize writers! :D<p> 


	5. ch04: My head is bloody, but unbowed

Sorry this update took so long! But it makes up for it by being almost as long as the combined length of the previous four chapters, because I didn't want to cut before a certain scene...

* * *

><p><em>Out of the night that covers me,<em>  
><em>Black as the pit from pole to pole,<em>  
><em>I thank whatever gods may be<em>  
><em>For my unconquerable soul.<em>

_In the fell clutch of circumstance_  
><em>I have not winced nor cried aloud.<em>  
><em>Under the bludgeonings of chance<em>  
><em>My head is bloody, but unbowed.<em>

_Beyond this place of wrath and tears_  
><em>Looms but the Horror of the shade,<em>  
><em>And yet the menace of the years<em>  
><em>Finds and shall find me unafraid.<em>

_It matters not how strait the gate,_  
><em>How charged with punishments the scroll,<em>  
><em>I am the master of my fate,<em>  
><em>I am the captain of my soul.<em>

(Invictus)

* * *

><p><strong>Stardate 2259.60<strong>  
>(March 1st 2259)<br>Night

* * *

><p>.<p>

.

.

He'd fought as long as he could, refusing to go down no matter what, ignoring the pain, the broken bones, the torn ligaments, the internal bleeding… Nothing mattered except for the sheer **_wrath _**that kept him going, as if it was the very air that sustained him and gave him enough energy when his body should have succumbed to its injuries long ago.

The world was red, red with the blood of his family, red with the fireball they vanished in, _murdered by Starfleet, murdered right as he was about to escape with them_, right when they were finally going to be free and get away from Earth at last.

His eyes still burned from the many tears he had shed. Such was his sorrow, that despite his face being covered in dirt and blood, and marred with countless bruises, the tracks the tears had left were still clearly visible through the grime smeared on his skin. It added an even more haggard and crazed look to his expression.

_Joaquin, Kati, Otto, Joachim, Ling, Rodriguez, McPherson… And so many, so many more… I failed you. I failed you all..._

He'd been unconscious for most of the first two days after capture, too injured to function, but since the moment he'd woken up in a world where everyone he loved was dead, the grief and anger had become everything he had, everything he was.

Beyond the fact that he hadn't eaten or drunk anything in the three days since his capture, he simply thought that the sorrow had burned him so deeply that he was no longer able to cry, no longer had any tears left to wash away the pain, just the blood.

Food and drink no longer mattered, anyway. He only needed to survive long enough to exact vengeance for them, and then it would finally be over.

The only thing he had left was the need for revenge, and it consumed him, turning him into a feral thing. He fully intended to take out as many from Starfleet as he could before going down himself.

A part of him hoped that they would just finally kill him. Put him down at last and put an end to this miserable agony. There was no point in existing if he was alone. He'd lived for his family. Now that they no longer existed, there was no one in need of his protection.

The rest of him scorned himself for that weakness, for wanting to die to escape the pain.

Pain that he deserved for failing them. There wasn't enough pain in the universe to make him pay for it. And yet, even with such thoughts, he already felt like he'd been feeling all the pain that was possible, ever since they died.

He had so many regrets.

In his dark musings, he wished Marcus had just killed him from the start.

Maybe someone else might have been luckier, or have taken a different path, and succeeded where he failed. Maybe Joaquin, with his strength, or Kati with her adaptative nature, or even Joachim, who showed such promise despite being the youngest of them... Maybe then they would all be alive.

If only he could have died in their stead.

Even in the thick of the fighting, these thoughts haunted him constantly.

He screamed with rage and despair and slammed his fist as hard as he could into the face of the nearest guard that was trying to tackle him. He ignored the horrible noise his own arm made, already-broken bone shards sliding against one another, tearing further into the flesh and muscle.

Another guard was grabbing his leg, and Khan did his best to kick both him and the third one that was trying to put him in a headlock. The augment bit down into that guard's arm, and the crunching noise was so satisfying he didn't even hear the crunching sound from his own head when the fourth guard's baton hit him.

The pain from everything was so great he barely registered the additional injuries he sustained, too focused on trying to damage the enemy to be able to notice anything else.

There had been too many blows though; one moment he was standing and trying to reach to gouge out the eyes of one of the guards, and the next he was slamming face first on the ground, the wind knocked out of him by a heavy blow from another guard. It would seem his legs had finally betrayed him and refused to go on supporting him.

Unsurprisingly, a rain of baton blows instantly followed the moment the guards noticed their quarry had gone down. Stun batons delivered powerful jolts of electricity as well as blows, cracking additional bones and pushing the augment to the very edge of unconsciousness before a higher-ranking guard stopped the others, apparently so that he could taunt Khan rather than for the sake of ethics.

Wheezing and sluggishly bleeding all over the ground of the cell, both from the recent injuries and from slightly-older untreated ones, the augment was only barely aware of his surroundings, but still conscious enough that he was instinctively attempting to get back up to attack again.

He was vengeance personified now, _war itself_, only alive to go on fighting.

_And die, hopefully die, soon, _he thought between pangs of self-loathing.

A guard sneered at him, "Stay down, you piece of shit. You wanna die that badly?"

_Yes._

_But not by the hands of scum like all of you._

Ultimately, he still wanted to escape and go after the rest of Starfleet, to make an actual difference, by taking out its top brass.

But he realized that by now he was too damaged to make it outside and be functional, so he was getting ready to regretfully settle for the guards.

"Y-...You...are all guilty… Your _starfleet_..." The word was a curse on his lips, spat out with such intense hatred that it somehow silenced even the jeers from the guards. A line of bloody saliva was hanging between Khan's lips and the ground, and it trembled softly as he spoke. The cell went dead silent as he spoke, his voice so broken and strained that it sounded more like a rattle than anything like his once-rich baritone. "...star...fleet…killed them all. And...I'll drag...you all down…to hell…with me...for it. With my last...breath...I-"

Perhaps it was the incongruity of a man who looked close to death threatening a group of armed guards, or maybe it was the certainty of their impunity, but they had the gall to laugh.

The fury that laughter awakened in Khan was such that it nearly blinded him. It was so extreme that, even though a moment earlier he was barely able to move, he suddenly managed to drag himself to his knees, and was an instant away from doing the impossible and standing up, when one of the higher-ranking guards said something that made him suddenly freeze.

"The other seventy-two bastards are less dead than you, for now at least… But you keep pulling stunts like this and at this rate they'll definitely put you all down, even the frozen ones."

It wasn't even a proper threat, they were still laughing at him as if it didn't even matter, as if his people were less than insects for someone to speak of their death so callously.

"...You _lie…_"

In a better world, his voice wouldn't have sounded so broken and shaky. In a better world, his legs would be able to support him so he could grab the guard and force the truth out of him.

The higher-ranking guard seemed to find the whole situation unexpectedly amusing.

"It's the truth. Wanna see?"

A quick connection on his PADD later, and the officer was talking with a guard in a different facility, the interior of which looked like a large storage facility.

"Hey Sean, show us the tubes!"

The man in the video angled the camera, and row upon row of cryotubes appeared in the dimly-lit hangar behind him. As far as it was possible to see, each was connected to the proper equipment and contained a live occupant.

The guard next to Khan crouched to show the video feed to the augment on the ground.

Khan had never counted rows and lines as fast in his life.

_Seventy-two._

_Seventy-two..._

_Seventy-two, seventy-two, seventytwoseventytwoseve o_

The augment's face had fallen, undergoing a rapid transformation from complete shock to disbelief, hope and finally agonizing denial. His eyes were glued to the screen of the PADD and had a tinge of madness in them.

"It's a lie…a trick…old footage…from when they were in Marcus' Kelvin Archive warehouse…it has to be…"

His voice sounded pathetic in his own ears, so broken with hesitation and desperation. He wasn't sure what frightened him more, that this tentative hope might be the lie he expected it to be, or that it could really be true. In which case, his people were still at the mercy of Starfleet, and he was in no condition to save them from whatever untold horrors may yet be coming for them.

The guard snorted.

"Sean, tell this bastard what day it is today so he'll know we're not pulling his leg."

The man in the video confirmed the date, and even mentioned it had been two days since they had gotten the tubes out of the badly damaged _USS Enterprise_ after the clash with the _Vengeance_.

_There could be no lie then. _The pained denial on Khan's face disappeared, replaced by the very embodiment of absolute terror as the gravity of the situation became a reality. His heart was hammering so hard in his chest that he thought it was going to burst.

The guard stood up, mocking him further as he did, "So now you know… If you keep giving us reason to believe you're nothing but a savage, you're only going to get them killed faster."

The words that should have made him furious barely registered at all. Khan had thought he'd been wrung out so hard that he was emotionally drained beyond all ability to feel anything. He'd thought he had no tears left to shed. But all of a sudden, while he was still dazed and in shock, gaping at the small screen now farther away in the guard's hands, he felt a warm wetness rolling down his face, which for once wasn't blood. He angled his head, trying to keep a modicum of privacy so they wouldn't see just how badly he was falling apart. The tears burned his tired eyes, leaving fiery trails down his cheeks.

He was already on his knees. It wasn't that much further.

Putting his palms on the ground, he bent forward as much as he could without risking falling, assuming a supplicating position before he threw to the wind whatever he may have left of his dignity.

"Please! Don't hurt any of them. I'll do anything you want."

There was a rawness to his voice, bordering on something that might have been called panic on anyone other than Khan.

The guard -despite having initially backed away quickly when the augment moved- gloated, taunting him, "Oh that's a nice change. You look good on your knees, begging… It's where animals like you belong." He made a gesture with his foot, as if he was about to touch the augment's head with the sole of his boot, but pulled back at the last minute, still remembering Khan's earlier rampage and not wanting to push his luck, even now.

Khan grit his teeth, repulsed by the insults but too worried for his crew to give into temptation and rise to the obvious bait.

Instead, he tried appealing to them.

"Your starfleet evidently wants something from me or you would have killed me long ago. So I serve a purpose. Whatever it is that you want, I will cooperate, so long as my crew is unharmed."

To Khan's surprise, they sneered, but rather than mock him further or take advantage of this new development, the higher-ranking guards began to leave the room, the lower ones automatically trickling behind them. Those he'd injured exited supporting each other and walking painfully.

It was a puzzling thing. From what he knew of their ilk, from what he'd seen confirmed under Marcus, he hadn't expected them to leave him, especially now that they knew they held such power over him. Not even if they had been purely Starfleet, but with these all being Section 31 men, it was all the more strange. He had expected a completely different reaction, in fact.

Horrible as the alternative may have been, this departure didn't bode well. None of this did.

The jailers prudently waited until they were all on the other side of the armored door and it had been locked again before the one who had initiated this unexpected exodus launched from the little surveillance window, "And end up with more crushed heads? I don't think so, no."

Another added, "The only purpose you serve by staying alive is to show up at a trial before we put you down like the rabid thing you are. That way no one can claim there was no 'due process' after we kill you. Not that you deserve a trial anyway."

"The other seventy-two bastards will go the same way as you, sooner or later. So don't expect to see the rest of your little genocidal pack any time soon. Unless it's in the afterlife when they're no longer needed. We'll cut them all up until we find out what makes you all tick."

And even then, some of the guards laughed.

_They laughed, as they said it, as they spoke words that made them anything but human._

And Khan screamed, bellowed something full of rage and despair as he somehow managed to rise to his feet, fueled by pure rage.

He threw himself forward with all his strength, slamming into the high-security door hard enough that it shook ominously and made the two nearest guards outside step back with a surge of fear. Masonry dust trickled from the ceiling from the points where the impact against the door had been transmitted to the wall through the frame.

* * *

><p><strong>Stardate 2259.72<strong>  
>(March 13th 2259)<br>Early afternoon

* * *

><p>The impact was such that even from the camera feed on Mendez' PADD, Jim could see that Khan's shoulder -<em>the good one, not the one Spock broke<em>, he thought_-_- clearly came out of its socket, likely broken now as well.

The augment pummeled the door for a while, kicking and hitting it savagely, as he continued screaming, and then, apparently in a red haze, set about the complete destruction of whatever he could manage to rip off the walls or off the floor of the cell.

The camera went grey with static the moment he hit the lens and destroyed it, but it was momentarily possible to see the blood on it just before it fully shut off, from where the augment's hand was injured.

Other than the soft buzzing of the medical machines, the only sounds breaking the heavy silence in Jim's hospital room were the static noise from the broken camera recording on the PADD before it stopped, and the muffled sounds of Jim being overcome with emotion. This would have been hard enough to watch were he in perfect health, but it was even harder to deal with when he was so drained. José was dead-silent, staring at Jim with a mix of shame and worry.

If someone had previously told Kirk he would shed tears for Khan of all people, he would never have believed them.

The captain's feelings were all over the place. The anger he felt for the augment remained, but Jim's compassion was stronger than his thirst for vengeance, and try as he might, he could not convince himself that maybe Khan deserved whatever was coming for him.

A part of him was angry at himself, angry that he should feel so bad for the man who had killed Pike, and yet… Jim couldn't help feeling upset when witnessing what the augment had gone through.

_And I've only had a glimpse of it! Was it always like that under Marcus? Was it like that in the past?_

_Marcus had said, "You saw what this man can do all by himself. Can you imagine what would happen if we woke up the rest of his crew?!"_

_Had humanity ever taken a different approach with augments? Had there ever been a time when they might have been given a chance to live in peace, rather than be condemned by default because of the danger they posed?_

_The augments rose to power to escape being the property of the labs, or made into cannon fodder for whatever war they were designed for… And even then, they were torn down, some deservedly. But in the end, all shared the same fate, regardless of whether they were guilty of anything or not._

Jim knew that despite what happened with Pike, Khan was on a completely different league from the genocidal tyrants of the Eugenics Wars.

_Khan was the __**only **__one of those rulers who was different; he hadn't invaded other's territories, he'd only fought defensive wars. He never committed massacres…_

Khan was certainly very dangerous, but ultimately he had truly wanted nothing but peace. Even with the bias of history being written by the victors after the augments had been overthrown, history books still clearly spoke of his benevolence and pursuit of peace, even when the enemy was on his doorstep.

It therefore felt even more unfair that the full force of humanity's distrust of his people should fall squarely on Khan's shoulders, of all augments.

And the fact that it was Starfleet that was taking this extreme view, even if it was through Section 31, made Jim physically ill. He wasn't able to compartmentalize like others and act as if their hands were somehow clean, despite Section 31's actions.

Finding out about this new horror while in such a weakened state didn't help either. Jim breathed heavily between tears, trying to regain some control.

"How could you, José, how could you?!"

Kirk rasped out the words with such disappointment that it hurt the other man more than if he'd hit him.

"I… I wasn't exactly involved, Jim! I'm with Starfleet Command, I'm not in the cells watching over each guard's back."

"You are one of them! You're…with _them_!"

"I thought 'they' were 'us', Jim."

"Us? Us?! This isn't us! This isn't Starfleet! As far as I'm concerned, I just watched a prisoner being tortured, in a prison cell under Starfleet's authority! Look what Section 31 is doing to Starfleet! This, this is what they will turn Starfleet into!"

"It's…not what that was supposed to be. They were just trying to restrain him."

But the words sounded hollow in his own ears, and guilt flushed Mendez's face. He knew Jim was right. The blond's next words only drove that idea further home.

Jim was almost shouting now, his voice breaking on the higher notes.

"No? No?! When they beat him until he couldn't get up anymore and then told him they'd kill his family to make sure he stopped fighting? That wasn't a form of torture?! Really?! Could have fooled me!"

It was a wonder no one had come to check on the commotion. Bones must have been elsewhere or have gone looking for Spock in the cafeteria, or he would have already heard and barged through the door ready to unleash the full force of his grumpy Southern disapproval.

Jim stopped shouting and attempted to catch his breath before continuing in a lower, but equally outraged, voice.

"I don't… I don't know what to say, José. This isn't the Starfleet I signed up for. This isn't right, and you know it."

José was burning with shame now, but even though part of him agreed with Jim and had been uncomfortable with the situation from the start, another part of him still hurt too much to think as objectively as the captain. Maybe it made him less noble than Jim, or maybe just slower to forgive, but he couldn't help it. The death of Pike had been too hard of a blow, and he'd never had the additional experiences with Khan to give him more context.

In a wavering voice that wasn't quite sure of itself, José blurted out, "We... We wanted this Jim. We wanted revenge."

There was a certain tone of desperation in his voice that made it sound as though he were trying to convince himself as much as Jim.

Kirk stared at him in abject horror.

_Not like this. Nothing like this._

"No, José. I wanted justice."

* * *

><p><strong>Stardate 2259.6X?<strong>  
>(March 2259, unknown day)<br>Unknown Time

* * *

><p>It had been days since he'd found out his crew was alive.<p>

After the initial outburst, he'd cooled down significantly, partially thanks to the fact his body shut down, unable to keep up going with the amount of damage it had received.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been unconscious, so he only had a very vague idea of what day it was now.

When he woke, his wrists and ankles were securely cuffed to a gurney. Intravenous lines were attached to him, whether to infuse him with nutrients or simply with drugs to make him docile.

It would seem that for all their eagerness to execute him, they weren't willing to lose their prisoner before that upcoming farce of a trial.

But now that he was no longer as visible of a threat, they had lost most of their fear to approach him, and the behavior he'd come to expect from them resumed.

Currently, doctors bustled around him, discussing the tissue samples they'd taken and what part of him to cut open and collect more samples from next. He felt drained of more than just blood, an impression that was likely true, seeing that, among other things, they had removed quite a bit of spinal fluid moments ago.

He'd experienced these procedures under Marcus as well, particularly intensely shortly after he was first found. But back then their need for his relative good health and functionality to perform covert operations and design weaponry had made that after the initial period, heavy experimentation on his body and its limits became less frequent.  
>Now that he was a condemned man though, they had no qualms about performing all kinds of extensive research on him.<p>

Khan gasped for breath, dizzily watching the people moving around him in a blur.

When he was a child, the threat of vivisection was their equivalent of what the bogeyman was for normal children; a dreadful thing the lab staff would dangle over their heads as the inevitable outcome if they failed to meet expectations, be it in tests or the battlefield. _'Your scores are falling behind, kid! You better pick up the slack or we'll have to scrap you!'_  
>Failed subjects were dissected alive to collect samples and perform various tests in order to find out why and how they had failed, so as to improve the others. It was a constant fear in the back of their minds, pushing them to keep moving forward at any cost, lest they be the next ones strapped to a lab table. The bloody hazmat bags the children saw the staff regularly carry from the labs to the incinerator kept their fear alive and strong.<p>

It was perhaps ironic that he'd succeeded at becoming better than anything they had intended him to be -though the labs certainly were displeased when that backfired and he freed his people from them. And yet the reward for being _better _was to be cut open and treated like a lab specimen once more.

To have that childhood horror come true, the wheel coming full circle to drag him under, was an unexpected additional horror.

They did not even seem to consider him human; they talked about him as if he were barely sentient, or as if they didn't realize he was conscious enough to feel and hear everything going on around him. It was like his early years all over again.

And yet, even with the drugs, there was a clear tension in the air when they handled him, when it was necessary to move him elsewhere or place him into a different position. They acted as if they were handling a sedated tiger, the product of their successful hunt and yet still inherently dangerous.

_Let them._

_Let them touch me over and over, cut me open countless times, conduct whatever experiments they want._

_Let them get used to my apparent lethargy and passivity._

_Let them grow careless._

_I will wait._

_I will survive. _

_I will strike at the most opportune moment, when they least expect, when they are so used to having me at their mercy that they will never see it coming._

_Then, they will __**bleed**__._

_They will regret thinking they could imprison and threaten my people._

_I will free my people if it's the very last thing I do before I die._

**_I will prevail._**

It had been days since then.

He imagined the day of the trial must be close, judging by the way the scum considerably increased their experiments and sample collecting in the last few days. He felt nauseous and there was not a part of his body that didn't ache or burn.

_They need to get their time's worth before their most convenient specimen is put down._

At least that meant that they weren't going after his crew yet. That thought brought him some comfort.

He was slumped against the wall in a corner of his new cell, knees drawn to his chest, head drooping to the side. He'd been in this position for hours now, ever since the guards had brought him back from yet another round of experiments and had dropped him there, rather than on the small cot that served as his bed.

He wore a basic hospital gown, from under which various bandages peeked out, some stained through with blood. There were more parts of his body that were injured than ones that weren't.

One of his wrists was heavily bandaged, and the other arm -the one with the worst fractures- was in a cast, held against his chest by a sling with a quick-removal strap for easier access to his body during the experiments. His shoulders were both in light casts as well.

The ground and the walls reeked of disinfectant. He was weakened enough that they were afraid he might easily get a bad infection, and so everything around him was sanitized even further.

The smell was sickening and burned him. The way he breathed shallowly and with difficulty wasn't helping either. His nose was clogged with dried blood and he had to inhale and exhale slowly through parted lips.

The ceiling camera on the opposite corner or the cell made a small whirring noise and moved around every so often, sweeping the cell before refocusing fully on him, like a dark eye always ominously watching him day and night.

No reaction. Only a dead gaze staring at nothing from behind tangled clumps of hair falling over his face. He didn't move even when guards came into the room to carry him to the labs again.

He slept wherever they set him down, be it the bed or on the ground, and didn't eat or drink, acting as if he didn't even see the tray they'd set near him at the beginning, no matter how hungry he was.

The bluff paid off; after a few days, they gave up on bringing a tray and accepted that nutrients and hydration had to be given to him intravenously.

Attempts to talk to him or taunt him were met with no response whatsoever. Some of the guards joked that with how pale and unmoving he was, it would be hard to tell him apart from a broken marble statue or a damaged porcelain doll.

_It was working._

_It was all working._

They had already ceased to bother cuffing him every time. Most seemed to believe he was catatonic. He no longer reacted, even when some of the guards struck him, or worse. He just went on staring into nothingness and remained limp, as if his body was boneless, sliding down to the ground if they let go of him. Many had started to assume his spirit was finally broken, his mind nearly gone.

Behind those apparently dead eyes, a superior mind was racing feverishly with plans and ideas, constantly assessing the behavior of everyone around and calculating when the best time to act would be.

The only problem was he wasn't healing well. They had finally tended to his wounds but the damage the experiments kept inflicting, and the lack of a proper chance to recuperate between them, left him in a lamentable state.

Even an augment needed at least a couple of weeks to heal a bone fracture, and in his case the process was significantly slowed down by the doctors reopening wounds to observe the differences in the healing process or to collect freshly-knit bone samples containing his augmented cells.

Between that and all the other material regularly collected from his body, be it blood, spinal fluid, samples from muscle mass or internal organs, he was only faking the apparent stupor and lack of responsiveness. The physical damage was entirely real, and had him struggling to remain as mentally functional as he could.

His condition helped him in his pretense of being harmless, but it was a serious disadvantage for his plan. In his current state, he had no chance whatsoever to escape the facility, even if he did manage to overpower the guards between trips to the lab. In an enclosed facility with such a high number of guards, he would be instantly recaptured before he managed to make it out of the building.

He would have to try his luck once they were outside, once they moved him for the trial.

If they were going to hold the hearing without him they could have just killed him at any time and lied about the date of his death. He was sure they would parade him around, even if just for the higher ranks of Starfleet, to give their sham the appearance of a real trial. They would need him there, for them to accuse and condemn him. And he would have his chance then.

Depending on how heavy the security might be, he would have to implement his escape plan either on the way there or just after. He would only get one go at it before the element of surprise was ruined.  
>And only while they were outside would he get a chance to escape far enough without immediate recapture.<br>Then, it would be a matter of finding a place to hide, and attempting to regain his strength and find where his crew was hidden.

It was like living the nightmare from London all over again, but from an even more precarious position this time around. If it had been hard enough to escape Marcus, even with the options he had then. Now his chances were so much slimmer.

He was no fool. He knew his likelihood of successfully escaping was extremely low. And even if he did succeed, the chances that he'd be able to find and free his people, especially before any of them was harmed, were even lower.

_But there was no other way. _

He was alone against the world, and the survival of everyone he loved depended entirely on him. _It was always so. _And so he had to find a way, no matter the cost for himself.

There would be time to heal later. The only thing that mattered was to get his people, his family, away from Section 31 and any of the monsters who viewed them as nothing more than flesh and blood to fuel their twisted experiments. The sooner he acted, the higher the chance that more of them might survive; the thought of losing any of them was enough to tear him apart inside, but he realized it was a horrible inevitability with the time it would take him to regain his strength and get them out.

If only he weren't alone. But there was no one else who would help them. No one -_no one not in cryostasis, that is_- that he could rely on or trust.

So he would have to manage to save them alone, somehow.

* * *

><p><strong>Stardate 2259.72<strong>  
>(March 13th 2259)<br>Afternoon

* * *

><p><em>"Get out!"<em> Kirk had hissed at Mendez minutes earlier, and José had gone, looking as though his friend's disappointment had put the weight of the world onto his shoulders and washed away his chances of remaining blind to the injustice of it all.

Jim's tears had dried, but Spock and Bones returned to the room -bickering about something or other on the way there- to find him still overwrought about the recording and the thought of what Starfleet was about to condone.

"Good God, Jim! What happened?!" Tricorder in hand, Bones was immediately at his friend's side, scanning him for anything amiss, any signs of pain or something the machines might have missed. Spock hovered nearby, alarmed but staying out of the doctor's way so as to not interfere with any potential medical emergency.

"There's nothing wrong with me, Bones… I'm okay, it's just, it's a long story, and hard to explain."

"Hold that thought. The antibacterial hypos must be ready, I'll go down to the lab to get them and then you'll tell me everything, okay? Between myself and the green-blooded hobgoblin here, I'm sure we'll find a solution to whatever it is. Don't you worry."

Jim had been thinking of a possible solution, but only the very basic lines of a plan had begun to form in his mind, and he kept running into obstacles about how to execute it.

Bones' mention of Spock, however, struck a chord, and an idea suddenly flared to life in the forefront of Jim's mind.

_Yes. _

_That's it. _

_I know what to do._

It was a mad idea, and the likelihood of it failing was high, but he could never forgive himself if he didn't at least try.

The instant Bones was out the door, Jim yanked the blanket off his body and swung his legs over the side of the bed, much to the Vulcan's surprise.

As soon as Jim's toes touched the ground, Spock was there, gripping his forearms and supporting him when he swayed. Kirk leaned into his touch, having trouble standing by himself, and smiled at him, the complicity and trust in his gaze making Spock's heart skip a beat.

"Spock, I need to ask you a very important favor. You won't like it, but...as a friend, ple-"

The Vulcan interrupted him with an earnest look and a surprisingly gentle squeeze on his arm. "Anything, Jim. You don't need to explain. Anything you want, I will assist you with."

Spock expected anything but the request that followed.

"Quick, swap clothes with me and help me sneak out of the building. I have a court-martial hearing to crash."

"Jim...?"

"I need you to get a gurney and help me get downstairs. Then, huh...I'll need your communicator or a PADD, and your uniform." His mind racing at warp speed through the steps he'd need to take for his plan, Jim paused to recall the layout of the hospital from his academy days. "We'll swap clothes in the bathroom by the lobby. I have to get out of here and get changed quick before Bones gets back."

_Bones would blow a fuse if I told him. With the best intentions, of course. But he would be too worried to let me do this and there isn't an instant to lose._

Spock was staring at him with an eyebrow raised dangerously close to his hairline. The silent internal monologue going through the Vulcan's mind was a thing to behold.

The Vulcan hazarded, "Captain...all things aside, it would be illogical for you to go outside in your present condition. Your immune system is much too weakened. The magnitude of the neutropenia you are still suffering from as a result of the radiation would put you at a significant risk of infection and generalized sepsis if you came into contact with any pathogen. At the very least, you should wait until Dr. McCoy finishes administering this afternoon's dose of your antimicrobial therapy."

Even with his earlier promise, Spock hesitated to grant Jim's wishes, out of fear that his friend might be momentarily out of his mind and at risk of endangering himself. The Vulcan was considering calling for the doctor just in case, when the next request perplexed him further.

"No, I can't wait. It's today! I have to get there in time, and I still have to make an urgent call..." Jim licked dry lips, catching his breath. "...to New Vulcan. I have an even worse favor to ask you. Well, you...the _other _you."

Spock had a _very _bad feeling about where this was going, illogical as such a thing may be…

.

.

.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong> All the stuff we see in Jim's thoughts about Khan's past and Khan being different from the augment rulers who committed genocide, is actually from canon Star Trek. Spock's accusation in STID was to stall for time for Bones to get the torpedoes ready, Khan didn't actually do what Spock was accusing him of. And as for Joaquin & Joachim both being mentioned, since they are so different between Space Seed and TWOK, I'm just going with my idea that they're different people, with similar names due to how the nurses in the labs would name them by cycles. A big thank you to NurseDarry for beta'ing! :D  
>(Any butchering of the English language that might remain is my own addition, and not her fault in any way.)<p>

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><p>Reviews are so welcome! They re-energize writers! :D<p> 


	6. Ch05: All Aboard the Pequod

_"For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease."_  
>Moby Dick<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Warning:<strong> There's a (non-explicit) noncon scene in this chapter.  
>It's at the end of the chapter and can totally be skipped if noncon fic makes you uncomfortable.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Stardate 2259.322<strong>  
>(November 18th 2259)<br>Morning

* * *

><p>.<p>

.

.

The damp of the previous night's rain had not lifted yet, and already the bridge crew of the _Enterprise_ was in a gloomy disposition with the latest news.

Less than twenty-four hours had passed since the accident that nearly claimed Jim Kirk's life, and the _Enterprise_ was ordered to prepare for immediate departure, while its captain lay in hospital still caught between life and death.

Bones threw the PADD with the official orders down on the couch of his San Francisco flat far harder than such a device was normally meant to withstand. It bounced off a seat cushion and skidded a bit before falling on the floor with a worrisome noise.

"Those damn bastards! What do they take us for?!"

"Calm yourself, Doctor. In a situation such as this, remaining in control of our emotions is vita-"

"Calm?! _Calm_, you pointy-eared bastard?! Don't you see what they are doing?! They-"

"I assure you I am well aware of how suspicious the situation is, Doctor!"

Spock had raised his voice slightly, something that would have gone unnoticed if it had been anyone else but the Vulcan.

Coming from him, the minuscule increase in volume and the raw edge to his voice silenced even the recalcitrant doctor. They all stared at Spock as if waiting for him to somehow make sense of the situation they found themselves in, as if he could suddenly come up with a solution.

Spock seized the sudden startled silence and plowed on, "My suspicion is precisely why I have asked you all to gather away from an official Starfleet location. You have all received these orders. We are to report immediately to the _Enterprise_ under Captain Decker's provisory command. As the doctor stated in more colorful terms, this situation is highly irregular."

Chekov, the youngest of the group, could no longer restrain himself. "Zhey know zhat we would prefer to remain grounded until the Captain's condeetion is stabilized. Or until ve can know if he'll be okay, at least. And eet doesn't explain vhy they passed you over, Sir." The young man grimaced as he said the last sentence, regretting his choice of words as they left his lips. The dismay and worry that he might have rumpled his commander's dignity were obvious on his boyish face, and would have been endearing and amusing if the situation had not been so dramatic. "Ah, I'm sorry, Commander. I do not mean to offend."

"There's no offense, Mr. Chekov. And you are quite correct. There's nothing in the mission orders that justifies a sudden rushed departure like this, nor the unnecessary exception to the customary tradition of having the first officer of a ship serve as acting captain in the event of the captain being injured, until his recovery."

It was hard to view this as anything but a cover-up of some sort, or at the very least, an attempt to thwart them from potentially looking too closely at the details of the accident.

A cloud passed over the Vulcan's features, not out of injured pride, but of worry for his captain.  
>Uhura stepped closer, pressing a comforting touch to his forearm. Her eyes looked shinier than usual, from lack of sleep and unshed tears at the memory of how broken Kirk had looked in the hospital. He was so much more than just their captain.<p>

The previous night had been spent mostly at the hospital, waiting for any news about Kirk's state that had trickled out of the operating room as the hours progressed.

McCoy's eyes were bloodshot as well. He'd spent much of the night working on Kirk, he and Boyce alternating between emergency surgery to repair radiation damage and the preparation of the serum. At least they had large quantities of Khan's blood to work with, which was an immense help. That Khan had not only come to donate his blood, but offered such large amounts - much more than they had initially asked of him - had surprised Bones greatly.

Truthfully, when he'd seen Khan arrive at the hospital he'd instinctively wanted to throw him out. He still remembered the lamentable state Jim had been in after his most recent encounter with the augment, after the captain's kindness had pushed him to not only intervene in the trial, but allow Khan on board the _Enterprise_ once more. Jim had a habit of trying to protect everyone around him, and that always inevitably got him in trouble. Bones had been the one to pick up the pieces after Khan had ultimately departed, so he felt particularly vicious towards the augment, even more so than they'd already been feeling after everything that happened prior to the trial. It felt more personal now, after all Jim had done for the augment.

If not for Jim needing the man's blood to survive -and for the fact Khan could probably easily break him in two single-handedly- McCoy would have bodily thrown the augment out of the hospital. Instead, he grumbled about Khan being there unrestrained and jabbed the needle into his arm perhaps a little harder than needed.

It had been dawn when McCoy had finally left the hospital, and only after Boyce had practically booted him out, telling him to go home and sleep a few hours. Bones strongly intended to simply take a quick shower and change, before heading straight back to the hospital and claiming he had napped enough. McCoy hoped he might find a way to improve on the serum they'd started administering to Jim. The whole thing was a nightmare, even without the unpleasant flashbacks it caused, McCoy unhappily recalling the previous time the captain had been in a coma, his life hanging in the balance of some miracle brought about by Khan's blood.

None of them had slept much, even those who weren't involved in the medical procedure, or those who didn't stay all night. Scotty had returned to the Enterprise that evening, and Chekov and Sulu had gone to their Starfleet-assigned apartments a bit later too, but they had all taken their worries for their captain with them.

Spock had remained in the hospital all night in case there were any new development in Jim's state. Uhura did the same and slept a few uncomfortable hours on waiting room chairs.

The Vulcan had left not long after the doctor, planning to compose himself and head over to Starfleet Headquarters in order to use his position as acting captain to request to join the investigation into the accident, as soon as the people able to authorize that arrived.

Before he could do any of that though, the official orders had dropped on them all like a bomb, prompting this hurried gathering.

Spock rationalized, "A groupwide refusal to follow these orders would be considered a mutiny, so I urge you all to report to the ship. I will remain behind so that only one of us will have disobeyed command."

"You? Mr. 'Vulcans-can't-lie' wants to be the one committing mutiny? That's going to go well! And it's not like they'll fail to notice the ship is missing its first officer, either."

"Dr. McCoy, I fail to see how your sarcasm will-"

"It's simple. I'm Jim's appointed physician. I have more of an excuse. I'll claim I was in and out of surgery so much that I only saw the orders after the ship had left. Dr. M'Benga will replace me as CMO for the mission. That way we'll draw less attention to our suspicions and I'll stay behind to keep an eye out for anything strange."

Even Spock had to resign himself to the idea that the doctor's solution was better, and fall back on the thought that he'd get to observe Captain Matt Decker up close and try to find out if he knew anything.

In the end, it was decided that both McCoy and Scotty would remain behind. Bones, because he had the best excuse, and Scotty because the engineer pointed out how he was extremely skilled at shoving his nose in classified information he wasn't supposed to be looking into, and was willing to risk a demerit on his record by claiming he'd been too hungover to see the orders until it had been too late -if Starfleet wanted to give them last minute orders, they shouldn't be surprised if some of the crew didn't get them in time.

.

.

.

* * *

><p><strong>Stardate 2259.72<strong>  
>(March 13th 2259)<br>Afternoon

* * *

><p>.<p>

.

The comm-pic flickered to life, clear enough and yet nowhere as detailed on a tiny screen as it would have been on the large viewscreen of a ship.

_The Enterprise spoils you for civil life. There's no comparison._

A dignified elderly Vulcan's image materialized on the small screen of the PADD Spock had lent Jim, and immediately broke Vulcan composure by smiling warmly as soon as he was greeted by the sight of the young captain.

"Jim. It is remarkably pleasing to see you awake and well, my friend."

"Thank you, Spock. It's good to see you too." Jim returned the smile just as sincerely, even though it would never feel any less weird that there were two Spocks, and that this one felt as close to him as if he'd known him for years. Jim pushed aside the guilt and plunged in, "I'm going to get straight to the point, and I'm so terribly sorry for what I'm about to ask of you. Frankly, I have no right to ask you to help me with this..."

.:.

Some moments and a somewhat-summarized though convoluted explanation later, the younger Spock was staring at Jim as if the captain had grown a second head, while the older one was attempting to dissuade him of his idea.

"Jim. You cannot possibly be serious about this."

Dissuading Jim of a dangerously heroic plan was a useless pursuit.

"Please, Spock. I just ask that you help with this part of the plan, and I will take care of the rest. I promise it will be okay and he won't come after us once we ensure his crew's safety. The Federation prohibits genetic engineering but surely that doesn't mean the augments that already exist should be put down! Please don't tell me you would consider something so inhumane to be logical!"

The old Vulcan's face contorted into a pained expression, logic and heart warring over what was morally right versus Jim's safety. The young captain pushed on, "I can't possibly stand by and let this happen; I would never forgive myself. It doesn't matter what he did to us, nothing excuses what they're about to do to him, or to his people. We are all guilty if we let this happen."

"But Jim... You don't know this man like I do." The old Vulcan's voice sounded small and defeated, as if he already knew he was arguing a lost cause. But from the edgy tone at the end of that sentence, it sounded like Spock considered that 'man' was not necessarily a term Khan deserved. "You don't know what he is capable of. He is a beast, a ruthless beast."

"And so are we if we let them put him down without even giving him a chance."

"No, Jim, no. Please consider what you are asking of me and the danger involved."

"Spock, please. Help me with this…please. It's the only thing I'll ever ask of you."

As if the rest of the conversation hadn't been painful enough already, the desperate look in Jim's eyes as he practically begged him could have shattered Spock's heart.  
>Jim pressed further, very much unknowingly twisting the blade in the wound, "You said that you have been and always would be my friend. And later you said that I could count on you for anything. This is the one thing I need help with…"<p>

Jim knew the enormity of what he was asking, but he had no other way to stop Starfleet. His sense of justice wouldn't allow itself to be silenced by the guilt he felt about asking for such a huge favor from Spock.

The look on Spock's face nearly broke Jim.

"Jim… You will have what you want. Even if you had not asked this of me first, the Vulcan Council might have granted it to you on the basis of your intervention during Nero's attack having saved our people. But since you came to me, I will ensure that there will be no opposition to what you've asked for, and that the task is fulfilled to your specifications. I can only hope this will not cause more tragedy than it might solve."

"Thank you, Spock. Thank you, so much. I promise I will do everything to ensure you don't have cause to regret anything."

Spock ended the comm-pic without saying he felt that the promise Jim had made was an impossible one, even for a man who didn't believe in no-win scenarios.

.

.

.

* * *

><p><strong>Stardate 2259.72<strong>  
>(March 13th 2259)<br>Earlier that day

* * *

><p>.<p>

.

Khan was exultant.

As much as it was possible to be while still locked in a cell and while having to remain unmoving as to not give away that he was conscious.

His pretense of being completely unresponsive had borne its fruit.

He lay in a heap on his side on the low cot in his cell, in the same place where they had last dropped him. He wore no cuffs -lately the guards had considered it unnecessary for a prisoner who hadn't moved of his own volition for days.  
>And because they thought him catatonic, they had also begun talking to each other more freely around him now.<p>

He now knew the trial was finally going to be held today at Starfleet Headquarters, and even knew roughly what time they would be leaving for it.

Not only that, but as a most fortunate and unexpected side effect, after days of incessant experimenting and sample-collecting that had left him drained and exhausted, even the lab staff were starting to grow careless around him. Earlier, one of the junior technicians who strapped him to the table had done a poor prep job and had failed to properly open the valve on his IV. As a result, the dose of drugs supposed to make him docile and sluggish had been decreased.

Thanks to that, Khan now felt more alert than he had in days. This didn't change the fact his body was a mess and even rising from the cot would be a feat, considering all the injuries and not-yet-mended bones he had, but it was still a significant improvement in his situation.

When he'd realized the drugs weren't being dispensed correctly, he'd been terribly tempted to strike as soon as the straps holding him to the table were removed, or later in the corridor when the guards carried him back to his cell.

But drugs or not, he was still terribly weakened and he knew that attempting escape now would result in his recapture before he could get out of the building. This was a high-security facility, and he only had enough energy to fight so many guards. He had to bide his time and strike only once they were outside. The key to his escape would be to evade recapture just long enough to blend in with the civilian population and disappear. Everything else would come later.

Knowing the trial was today had Khan's mind racing with both excitement and last-minute planning. Keeping up the act a while longer would be easy enough, and then he would be outside. Only a few more hours remained until he inevitably broke free and set off on his path to find and rescue his people -once he had recuperated a little, at least.

The heavy door of the cell opened again and a burly guard walked in, closing it behind himself. The auto-lock clicked and Khan had to once more suppress the temptation of initiating his escape right then and there.

_Patience. Only a little longer now._

From the conversation he'd overheard earlier between the guards outside his cell, Khan had learned the trial would be in the afternoon. But it was still too early and he was never escorted anywhere by a single guard, so it was likely this was just some sort of inspection.

_Or worse._

'Worse' happened every so often. The profession of 'guard in illegal secret prisons' didn't exactly attract the best of the recruits in any military body, unofficial internal branch or other. Most were little more than giant-sized brutes -picked for their muscle and ability to stay quiet about shady dealings rather than for their merit - and who viewed him as little more than a lab animal at best, or a monster at worst. Although he was certain that the latter ones, who disguised their contempt as self-righteousness by bringing up the _Vengeance_ crash before abusing him, were likely doing so more to make excuses and consider themselves morally superior rather than because they truly cared about the people who had perished.  
>Ironically, <em>he<em> cared. The sight of the destruction in the streets -which he'd seen from the crippled ship after it had finally stopped- still haunted him. And so he took the beatings and other abuse dished out every so often, both because he had to in order to seem as broken as he wanted them to think he was, and because part of him felt like each blow was a small form of penance.

But beatings were one thing. That was only physical pain. It was somewhat humiliating, but not as awful as the touches from some of the guards, which made his skin crawl. Things some of them would do to him as they carried him back and forth to the labs, or as they dropped him back in the cell after a round of tests. It was too similar to things that Marcus and others had done. So similar that it made him want to jump out of his skin and annihilate them all.

And burn all of his skin off so he could never feel it again.

He couldn't move his head to look up at the guard without giving his conscious state away, but there was no need. The moment the guard circled around the cot and leaned over him, running the cold tip of his baton up along Khan's exposed leg, the augment knew it was one of _those_ kinds of guards.

He suppressed a shudder of revulsion as the cold metal reached the top of his thigh and hooked under the hem of the flimsy hospital gown he was made to wear for easier access to his body in the labs. It covered barely anything, and in his current position, on his side with his legs together, it left his back completely exposed once the guard lifted the paper-like cloth out of the way, flipping the flaps of it open. Khan's back was a mess and bloody bandages littered his body. Light-casts still encased certain bones and there was a particularly nasty bloody bandage around his waist at the base of the spine, some centimeters above his rump.

Khan steeled himself as the guard paused to scrutinize his face, looking for signs of a reaction; there was none to be found, the augment wore only a vague neutral expression and the same dead gaze as before, staring at nothing in particular as if he was only there in body.

Emboldened by this, the guard slid the baton further, tracing the curve of the prisoner's bare ass before pressing the cold length up across it to see if the muscles would clench. One press of a button and the device would release a considerable electric discharge. In Khan's current state, it would likely drop him in one hit, and there was no way to know if he would regain consciousness in time for the moment to make his escape. He forced himself to show no reaction whatsoever. Both cheeks of his backside remained relaxed, soft and yielding against the pressure of the hard material. The guard snickered and set down the baton, splaying a crude hand on one of those enticing mounds, thick-gloved fingers tugging and pinching at the soft flesh in a greedy manner.

Internally, Khan was calculating what would happen if he were to suddenly lunge up and take the guard by surprise - now that the baton was down on the slim mattress, he should be able to do it before the guard could react fast enough. The man was significantly taller and bulkier, but that was a minor obstacle to the strength or intelligence of an augment, even as reduced as Khan was by his injuries and the traces of drugs still in his system. As long as he took the guard by surprise and disabled him fast enough before he could call for help or stun Khan, the guard would stand no chance. Provided that Khan could move fast enough with all the injuries he had, that was. But it should be feasible, with only one guard.

Crushing his skull wouldn't be anywhere as satisfying as crushing Marcus' had been, but it would abate the repulsive feeling the man's hands left on his skin, perhaps. That feeling as if his skin wanted to peel off his body.

But that would mean losing all chance of saving his crew. Khan had no way to get out of the locked cell, and abandoning the only advantage he had would only doom them all.

Starfleet would carry through with their mockery of a trial without him having a chance of escape, he would be executed, and his people would be at the mercy of these same monsters. If he tried anything here and now, he would lose _everything_.

The guard's brutish hands seized him by the hips, heavy fingers digging new bruises into already-battered flesh, and with a grunt and a swift movement, he dragged the prisoner closer to the edge of the cot, lifting his backside up in the air. Khan clenched his teeth, a surge of cold hatred flaring inside him like a wave of pure acid.

The jeers and verbal abuse were nothing. The beatings, he was used to. _Physical pain was nothing._ He was superior. _Better_. He could take physical pain all day and still withstand it so much better than a normal human. He could survive things that were unthinkable. _Had_ survived countless ones, in fact.

_But this. This was something else._

Maybe it was because this reminded him so much of some of the worst moments of his childhood, when some of the staff in the labs which had created them had decided that, since the augmented children weren't considered 'real' humans, it was not immoral to treat them as living sex dolls. They rationalized this by telling themselves that they had made the augments, given them life, and therefore had power of life and death over them… And everything in between.

The first person Khan had ever killed had been one of those scientists. And if not for that childhood murder never having being linked to him, he would have been executed for it, scrapped as defective for going against his makers rather than forgiven for standing up against a monstrous abuser.

He'd endured it for years before killing the culprit when the man decided to try the same thing on little Joachim, who was so much younger and defenseless at that time. Khan had managed to save the younger boy but somehow, he had never managed to save himself; as if condemned to have this same horror revisited upon his body over and over throughout his life, like a curse that could never be fully lifted, even centuries later.

Back when he was younger, some had mused that perhaps the perfection inherent to all augments, the beauty they all were bred with and which made them irresistibly desirable to anyone who saw them, was a curse rather than a blessing. It was part of their magnetic attraction when they were in a position of power, but more often than not, superior as they may be, augments had not been in positions of power, and that beauty had only attracted further abuse from their captors.

There was no clearer proof of that than the fact that even in a so-called civilized time which wanted itself a would-be enlightened utopia, this same crime was one of the first things that he'd experienced after the Botany Bay was found, and once Section 31 had made it clear that he had no choice but submit to them. And now it was going to happen yet again, unless he stopped it.

_Stop it and lose them all, leaving them to this same fate..._

_Or take it and maintain the illusion of helplessness in order to potentially win a chance to escape later. In order to save them._

The choice was clear in his mind all along.

Many of the other rulers during the war had made the mistake of thinking that a king, a leader, was someone who took power for themselves and had people submit to them. Khan knew better. He knew that the nature of ruling, of leading, was much more than merely being at the top. It was not something owed, but something earned, and with it, came the responsibility to do everything you had to do to protect your people. Whether that meant dirtying your hands so that others didn't have to, or suffering through whatever was needed to in order to ensure the survival and safety of his people. He knew his family would have done the same for him. And he never wanted them to have to live through any of this again.

So he clenched his teeth and held onto his considerable willpower to keep himself still and his muscles lax, even as he went cold when he heard the guard unzip behind him. At least the position he was now in, with his face pressed against the bedding and his tangled hair spilling over part of it, would conceal his expression in case he couldn't keep all of the fury off his face as it happened.

He told himself it was anger, and not fear, that made him quake internally as the guard spread him open. A man like Khan could not allow himself uncontrollable fears no matter the amount of past trauma that might have borne them. A man like Khan had to hold it all in and never lose his grip on his perfect control. So he swallowed the knot in his throat and forced himself not to tremble in response to the loathed familiar sensation of something foreign attempting to split him open.

He wanted to throw up.

_Later, there would be a time for vengeance._

For now, all he could do was commit the guard's face to memory like he'd done with so many others, like he'd done throughout his childhood, like he'd done under Marcus.

He never forgot a face. And like the scientists from the Eugenics era and Marcus himself, his new abusers would pay.

_Eventually._

For the time being however, he felt as helpless as he did as a child.

.

.

.

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><p><strong>Notes:<strong> Comm-pics are the subspace equivalent of our world's video-calls.  
>I'm aware that the article on memory-apha claims the term refers to the machine we see in TWOK, but I believe the term actually refers to the call itself, and not just the device used to make it.<br>At any rate, with the technological advancements brought about by the Narada scans done by the Kelvin (and which have influenced immensely Starfleet technology, hence the reboot Enterprise being more advanced and far larger than the TOS one etc.), one could imagine that comm-pics too, have come a long way since the other timeline, and might be now more accessible via smaller PADDs etc.  
>It's the premise I use in my fics for all these convenient PADD video calls etc. A big thank you to NurseDarry for beta'ing! :D<br>(Any butchering of the English language that might remain is my own addition, and not her fault in any way.)

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><p>Reviews are so welcome! They re-energize writers! :D<p> 


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